Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, Daughter Am I, More Deaths Than One, and A Spark of Heavenly Fire. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.”

Excerpt From “Winter’s Captive” by June Bourgo

February 18, 2012 — Pat Bertram

Georgia Charles travels to the Yukon to distance herself from a cheating husband. While struggling with the idea of her newly discovered pregnancy, she’s kidnapped by bank robbers who flee to north-western British Columbia. Here, she escapes into an area known as the last frontier.

Hopelessly lost in this vast, undeveloped wilderness, she pushes her way through a raging snowstorm and discovers a cabin. Georgia’s happy to have escaped her captors, but she’s trapped by days of blizzards and becomes a prisoner of Mother Nature.

Her will to survive is tested as she struggles through a harsh winter in the wilds. Faced with a lack of survival skills, she reaches the brink of emotional breakdown. She’s forced to confront her fears of childbirth alone and the possibility of complications. She envisions an angel, imaginary or real, who helps her discover her inner power.

Can Georgia unearth a maternal strength to save her life and that of her unborn child? Or will she perish?

A compelling, heroic story of one woman’s survival against all odds.

Excerpt:

Escape. That thought repeated over and over in my mind like the rhythm beat of a perpetual drum. But where could I go? Desperation took desperate measures. I would run at the first opportunity. This was a matter of life or death—mine and my baby’s.

Gary watched my every move. Late afternoon, we pulled into a gas station at the first town since turning onto this highway. A place called Dease Lake, surrounded by hundreds of miles of wilderness in any given direction.

“Hey, bitch…” Gary said, “… lie down. Bobby, you fill up the tank and I’ll go get some snacks. Lady, if you so much as twitch, I’ll shoot the first person I see in this hole.” He patted the gun in his jacket pocket. “Then, I’ll kill you!”

My heart pounded. There were people here that could help me, but they might as well be on the moon. Tears welled in my eyes. Don’t panic. Stay calm.

We were back on the road in a matter of minutes. Gary threw a can of pop and a bag of chips at me.

I finished them off in short order, only to keep up my strength. Great nourishment for a pregnant woman. Not that it mattered. This may well be my last meal.

“Isn’t that the road we go down to reach Uncle Pete’s cabin?” Bobby asked.

“Uh-huh. There’s the sign to Telegraph Creek.”

The van climbed up steep grades and dropped back down to valley bottoms. It was a rough ride on the gravel road, full of twists and turns on a washboard surface. My recent snack sat like a brick in my stomach and once again, I quelled the urge to vomit.

Hang on, girl. Now isn’t the time.

The further we travelled, the more I panicked. Soon, escape must be soon. It would be over for me when my captors reached their uncle’s cabin.

Gary mumbled to himself. Finally, he screeched to a halt, pounding the dash. “We’ve gone too far. That old bridge up ahead is miles past our turnoff. We’ll have to turn around and go back. Keep your eyes open for the turn. These damn logging roads all look the same at dusk.”

He swung the van around and sped back in the direction we just came. Five minutes later, a popping noise sounded and the van veered to the right.

“Sounds like a flat tire,” Bobby said.

“No shit.” Gary pulled the van over to the side of the road. “You get the jack and tire iron and I’ll get the spare.” He told me to get out. I dragged my weary body out the side door and a cold wind hit me in the face.

The front passenger side tire was flat all right. This was it. My moment to escape. There wouldn’t be any more opportunities. “I need a break, please,” I said, pulling my jacket collar up around my neck.

Gary’s yelling and swearing grew louder. Any minute he would come running into the bush after us.

“Okay. I’ll go down and help Gary. You come as soon as you’re done.” Bobby ran off down the path. “I’m coming . don’t have a shit fit.”

I didn’t believe it. He actually left me alone? Go … now.

Up like a shot, I bolted along the path in the other direction, securing my jeans as I ran. Bobby and Gary were yelling at each other, probably about me. I knew it would be Gary who would come. And if he caught me, I wouldn’t make it back with him.

Pounding feet sounded behind me. I glanced over my shoulder, almost tripping, but saw no one. My lungs gasped for air. Gary gained ground, the sounds of his obscenities getting closer. Get off the trail, now. My eyes searched for a place to hide. The near darkness provided deep shadows in the trees. The pathway rose up a small incline. I flew over the top and down the other side, where the path veered off to the right. To the left, an old game trail barely visible meandered through the trees.

I slowed and glanced around me. A tangle of fallen trees and branches on my left looked like a good spot to hide in. Branches scratched my face and caught in my hair as I pulled myself over the decaying trunks. I tumbled face first into a hollow under a log, filling my mouth with dirt and leaves. The smell of musty, rotting debris turned my stomach.

Gary charged over the top of the incline and came to a dead stop. Damn. I hoped he would miss the game trail and keep going.

“Alright, bitch. Come back now and I’ll let you live. If I have to chase you, you’re dead! Got it? D-E-A-D!”

Let me live? Sure you will. Oh God … I felt like a trapped animal. Terrified he would hear my raspy breathing, I tried to control my gasps. There was nothing I could do about the pounding of my heart.

***

June V. Bourgo is a semi-retired, self-employed graphic design and sign maker whose incredible journey has taken her down many different paths. From years of working in marketing/sales for a major telecommunications firm, managing a physiotherapy clinic, living on a houseboat in Victoria harbour, to working at a gold mine on a remote mountain in the Yukon, she chose to turn her experiences—good and bad—into life-changing lessons. Her debut novel, “Winter’s Captive”, shares with the reader what she learned through the fictitious story of one woman’s struggle to enlightenment and empowerment.

Born and educated in Montreal, Quebec, she now lives in the British Columbia interior surrounded by ranch lands, with her husband and two head of cat; Marbles, a calico diva and Picasso, a subservient tabby. June is currently working on a sequel to her debut novel.

Books by Pat Bertram

Available online wherever books and ebooks are sold.

Thirty-seven years after being abandoned on the doorstep of a remote cabin in Colorado, Becka Johnson returns to try to discover her identity, but she only finds more questions. Who has been looking for her all those years? And why are those same people interested in fellow newcomer Philip Hansen?

When twenty-five-year-old Mary Stuart learns she inherited a farm from her recently murdered grandparents -- grandparents her father claimed had died before she was born -- she becomes obsessed with finding out who they were and why someone wanted them dead.

In quarantined Colorado, where hundreds of thousands of people are dying from an unstoppable, bio-engineered disease, investigative reporter Greg Pullman risks everything to discover the truth: Who unleashed the deadly organism? And why?

Bob Stark returns to Denver after 18 years in SE Asia to discover that the mother he buried before he left is dead again. At her new funeral, he sees . . . himself. Is his other self a hoaxer, or is something more sinister going on?

Grief: The Great Yearning is not a how-to but a how-done, a compilation of letters, blog posts, and journal entries Pat Bertram wrote while struggling to survive her first year of grief. This is an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.